Be welcome! You are watching my personal pixel update platform for my painted metal meneken. Sounds mental as it is. Semi-Strictly 28mm. History 'light'. No magnifiers were used in this process. What I have, what will be painted, what I like, what rules I favour and more.
Watch this space and be patient!

Thursday, 22 September 2016

Ooops Napoleonics ... I'd rather be a Hippie! They all look the same to me anyway, it might be my personal prosopagnosia ... hey, just shakos isn't it?

Bill and Angus and Bart and Campbell had fished out some river-crossing scenario of the great late Grant (Cary???...) and the Swabian Würtembergers had to cross a river to beat the Austrians (Ulm Campaign) ... there are worse things you have to do in a wargamers life, but Austrians? I can't recollect more a than a handful of victories within 500 years for the lower lip worshippers, but wargaming would be half as fun without them, I have to give you that.

So I opted for the role of the "Kriegsberichterstatter" and just shot the pics ... to be downloaded at wish ...

The excellently painted figures were done by Master Campbell and Bill the Great!!!

Friday, 16 September 2016

Ritzebüttel (the estate of Rikert) was probably just heap of dung at that time (mentioned first in 1325 AD), as well as the Otterndorfer counts were just a wet dream of an up coming farmer ... and for many other reasons we can sent the saga of the Orkney vikings in Bremen into the land of fairy tales.

The reality was that, as connoissseurs of the "Gesta Hammaburgensis" probably know, the Askomannen (as the locals charmingly dubbed the vikings) that dared into these lands, received a very different greeting from lets say other islands or coasts. At the battle of Glindesmoor, for example, they were "slain to the last man". And even a Sven Estridsson was imprisoned by these folks once (before he would be king of Danemark).

So me and Angus just aired some of our Dark Age miniatures (mine even half-finished) to freshen up our rusty Saga wisdom and have a go at each other. So maybe more an Danish Eric against an old Billunger count ...

The skirmish was successful and interpretable, but I think I lost in the end, if not the complete overview of the battle, so I won't distress with details and just shine some light into the joyful event of that dark period.

Friday, 9 September 2016

Let me tell you, dear reader, and brace yourselves about the ghastly horrors, I have to unveil before your very eyes. In the year of 1758 in a small wooded valley in Arcadia with roads made from grand-ma's stockings at the small but pittoresque Fort of William, are the blood curling events about to enfold!

The black smoke rising of the farms all around were the first sign of the doom to come, so myself collected the remnants of the British survivors of the rural skirmishes at the fort and waited for His Majesty's investment (played by Bill) to come.

Then we saw the old enemy (the French played by Derek) and the sauvages (played by Jack) hiding at the end of the woods and showering the fort with musket balls.

These wildlings weren't playing by the rules (Musket and Tomahawk in this case), and we knew this!
The situation within the fort was getting more and more confusing, with Militias cowering between civilians and empty old useless guns. A redcoat fell every second from the battlements, baby's were crying. Then the colonel of the fort Sir Qualborogh decided to make a stand and guide the few civilians, mostly women and children, out into the freedom of the forrest.

But then the wicked French came to stand in their way and shot into the crowd without warning!!!
Barley to be able to hold their kids in their blood soaked skirts, they hurled themselves at the mercy of these ungallant foes, and in doing so even killed one of them! Then the massacre started and even the old colonel was to perish trying to impress these ruthless mercenaries of death, but to no avail!
Night was falling and hiding the true horrors of this crime.

Shame and blood collected this very day at the colours of the Bourbon marauders!

But worse was still to come - the blood curling ululations of the approaching sauvages beat the mind of the tormented militias hiding behind the wooden walls. And it was just second thereafter as the first wildlings was seen on the top of the battlements of the fort. They were in!!!

Here the report ends as the trauma of the sufferings is too great to reveal itself.
And we must wait for years to come until this fort or for better words this graveyard, shall be mentioned again.

Very peaceful, almost quiet calm is betraying our minds of the truly terrible things to come!

The face reveals nothing, but they need secrecy to grow - the thoughts of destruction!

The fiendish sauvages roaming in the wild woods!

The bad indians are stopping right at the tree line.

The civilians from the surrounding country side are coming before the gates will be closed!

Under watchful eyes of His Majesty's rangers - the enemy does't dare to come near.

The shooting starts around the overcrowded busy little fort

Two old guns were found, but no ammunition for them ...

The French regulars are approaching ...

... just in the moment when Colonel Qualborough decided to lead his majesty's subjects into freedom

As you can see (gun smoke) the brute devils are murdering innocent civilians!!!

Even as the stout American mothers hurl their babies at them to appease them ...

... and unfortunately in doing so killing one of the softer built French regulars ...

... where upon the French death squad repeatedly fusiliering these innocent victims!

And so in a last cavalier gesture, Sir Col. Qualborogh dies in defending the dead bodies of women and children!

Meanwhile the sneaky Chief Cowardly Crow and his tribe advancing towards wall in cover of the nightfall.

In cover of the night the French are leaving the cover of the woods.

... just a few rangers are left and no ammunition, and we all know how that will end!